Every once in awhile, I come across a book I do not want to end, that engages on many levels and invites me to re-read, to linger a bit longer. Jean LeBlanc's The Stream Singing Your Name is just such a book.
I was unfamiliar with LeBlanc's work before discovering it at the Modern English Tanka Press, but I was intrigued when I realized it contained both tanka and sijo. Sijo — pronounced shee-jo — is a classical Korean form consisting of three lines, traditionally 14-15 syllables each. LeBlanc intermingles the two forms, sometimes alternating, sometimes offering a sequence of sijo or a series of tanka, and creates a tapestry that brings out the best in each.
I find myself returning especially to her sijo. With its languid long lines, they are a beautiful foil to the emotional immediacy of the shorter-lined tanka. I have so many favorites in this collection. But on this day, I was struck by this lyrical and life-affirming sijo:
When I die, do what you have to do to make me, not of this earth,
but of these rocks, this limestone ridge. I want to feed the lichens,
anchor ferns firmly in these clefts, become my mineral self.
Whether she is writing about her students who don't distinguish between funereal and funeral, the dandelions she gives free rein every spring, her father's shoulders made strong from chopping wood or her garden in October with its
redbud leaves
and other crinkled hearts
beneath my feet
Jean LeBlanc reveals a deep regard for the world. Throughout the collection, the flow seems effortless, taking the reader from one to the next, until you arrive at the stream of the title in the final double sijo, and:
You wonder if you could just stand here, forever,
the stream singing your name around you.
